The Teacher Retirement System of Texas (TRS Texas) has committed $200 million to a fund that invests in car dealership properties.
From IPE Real Estate:
The pension fund is investing in the $651m BSREP CARS Co-Invest Pooling, a vehicle set up by Brookfield to invest in Capital Automotive, which provides real estate financing for car dealerships.
The commitment by Texas Teachers was one of several from institutional investors and will amount to 30.5% of invested capital in the vehicle.
Brookfield Strategic Real Estate Partners Fund provided most of the capital for the joint venture. Brookfield declined to comment on how much capital it has invested. Additional capital came from BSREP CARS.
Capital Automotive, which has invested $4.3bn in 440 US facilities and has a 16.3m sqft portfolio in 35 US states, typically provides real estate financing for automotive dealers to either acquire new locations or upgrade existing operations. The firm was previously owned by DRA Advisors.
Texas Teachers made the investment for its ‘special situations’ portfolio, a new category it created within its real assets portfolio for investments outside traditional core, value-added and opportunistic classifications.
TRS Texas manages $124 billion in assets and is the sixth-largest public pension fund in the United States.
Photo by Billy Wilson 2010 via Flickr CC License